Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day
Speaker 3: of each week that we read back messages from the
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you are
Speaker 3: a listener of the show and you've never gotten in
Speaker 3: touch before, why not give it a shot. You can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com. Send whatever you like. We especially appreciate if
Speaker 3: you have something interesting to add to a topic we've
Speaker 3: recently talked about on the show. But any kind of
Speaker 3: feedback is fair game. Of course, if you have corrections,
Speaker 3: those are always welcome. If you just want to say hi,
Speaker 3: send us a friendly message, let us know what you
Speaker 3: like about the show, or you know how you listen,
Speaker 3: any of that's fair game. Also, if you want to
Speaker 3: recommend topics or suggest movies for Weird House Cinema, that's
Speaker 3: that's welcome as well. Contact at Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com. Oh, before we get into the messages,
Speaker 3: brief announcement. We're going to be out for the rest
Speaker 3: of this week, so there will be some Vault episodes
Speaker 3: running in Tuesday and Thursday slots this week, and we
Speaker 3: will have a Weird House Cinema rewind for you on Friday,
Speaker 3: but we should be back with new stuff the following week.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, what do we have in the mail
Speaker 2: bag for us this time? Joe?
Speaker 3: Okay, we got some messages in response to our series
Speaker 3: on Strange Ice. This first message is specifically about a
Speaker 3: comment I made when we were talking about ice shove. Remember,
Speaker 3: ice shove is where ice that forms on the top
Speaker 3: of a lake or the sea gets pushed onto shore
Speaker 3: by wind or ocean currents, and in some cases it
Speaker 3: can pile up in these huge ice dunes that, when
Speaker 3: they get very large, can damage structures near the shore.
Speaker 3: We were talking about one specific news report about a
Speaker 3: supper club in Wisconsin that was affected by some especially
Speaker 3: menacing ice shove. So this message comes from John and Milwalk.
Speaker 3: John says, Hello, I'm writing in about Joe's quote the
Speaker 3: supper club is threatened. They're going to get ice in
Speaker 3: their hot dish comment regarding an ice push threatening Jim
Speaker 3: and Linda's supper club in your Strange Ice Part two.
Speaker 3: Your comment made me smile, but I wanted to adjust
Speaker 3: it slightly as a former Minnesotan and current Wisconsinite. More
Speaker 3: likely you'll find hot dish at a Minnesota church or
Speaker 3: community pot luck. At the supper club in Wisconsin, you
Speaker 3: may have extra ice for your Brandy Old Fashioned or
Speaker 3: ice cream blended Brandy Alexander. The ice would the ice
Speaker 3: would threaten your prime rib special or fish fry, depending
Speaker 3: on the day. All delicious by the bye, except for
Speaker 3: the Brandy Old Fashioned too sweet. Keep doing great work.
Speaker 3: Thanks John from Milwaukee. John, I accept this correction, so
Speaker 3: you are exactly right. For those unfamiliar with what I
Speaker 3: was talking about in my original joke, hot dish is
Speaker 3: a famous common type of dish prepared in the Upper Midwest.
Speaker 3: I've never lived in the Upper Midwest, so I don't
Speaker 3: have like intimate familiarity, but I know sort of secondhand
Speaker 3: from what I understand, it's basically like a casserole blueprint
Speaker 3: that can take a lot of different forms. But the
Speaker 3: version I know is like some kind of meat, maybe
Speaker 3: like shredded chicken or ground beef, frozen mixed vegetables mixed
Speaker 3: with a can or multiple cans of condensed cream of
Speaker 3: mushroom soup, and then topped with frozen tater tots, so
Speaker 3: you bake that until it's crispy.
Speaker 2: So kind of a casserole situation, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have similar dishes here in the Southeast as well.
Speaker 3: I think they're just not called hot dish. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, Grandma's casserole or whatever. It's some kind of
Speaker 3: casserole where a major ingredient is canned cream of mushroom soup. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: the supper Club in Wisconsin, I think that's like a
Speaker 3: somewhat traditional or old school, fancy type of fair where
Speaker 3: you go to the supper club on I don't know,
Speaker 3: Friday night or whatever. You get your classic cocktails, your
Speaker 3: brandy old fashioned or whatever, and they've got prime rib
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, well this is exactly the kind
Speaker 2: of email we like. We get some nice on the
Speaker 2: ground regional feedback.
Speaker 3: Right, and Midwesterners, I'm sorry, I hope that's close to
Speaker 3: the mark as I just described it. I'm sorry if
Speaker 3: I've slandered your culture once again.
Speaker 2: All Right, we have some more. We have some more
Speaker 2: regional feedback here. This one comes to us from Quinn.
Speaker 2: Quinn says, I have seen the ice bubbles described in
Speaker 2: the Strange Ice episode while ice skating on Lake Minnetonka
Speaker 2: in Minnesota. Although not as clear and plentiful as the
Speaker 2: photos from Alberta, they were very present. They were most
Speaker 2: common around areas that were a little marshy with heavy
Speaker 2: plant growth in the summer. My mother talked about when
Speaker 2: she was a child, her and her siblings would go
Speaker 2: hunting for one or the surface. When they found these,
Speaker 2: they would use the toepics on their figure skates to
Speaker 2: break open the bubble and drop a match into it,
Speaker 2: lighting the methane.
Speaker 3: That's an impressive story. I don't know how recommended that
Speaker 3: activity is, but yeah, great.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess in theory we're dealing with like
Speaker 2: individual small bubbles small amounts of methane, So I guess
Speaker 2: it's fine. But yeah, I didn't even think about that possibility.
Speaker 3: I guess it makes sense that these would be most
Speaker 3: common in, as you say, Quinn, areas that are a
Speaker 3: little marshy or have heavy plant growth. That seems like
Speaker 3: where there would be some kind of decay or decomposition
Speaker 3: of vegetable matter in the water that would lead to
Speaker 3: these methane pockets.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, because again, if you don't remember, you can
Speaker 2: listen to that episode. The basic idea is that, yeah,
Speaker 2: methane is rising up from decomposing organic material at the
Speaker 2: bottom of said body of water, and then it is
Speaker 2: like collecting underneath the forming layer of ice at the top,
Speaker 2: and then it gets trapped and it forms like multiple
Speaker 2: layers of these kind of squashed, elongated bubbles of captured methane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so thank you Quinn. Let's see Rob. Do you
Speaker 3: mind if I do this one from Jeremy? Go for it,
Speaker 3: Jeremy says, still on the subject of strange ice, Hello,
Speaker 3: Robert and Joe. In response to your request for strange
Speaker 3: ice pictures, here are a couple we found while skiing
Speaker 3: in Switzerland in twenty twenty. These are ice stalagmites in
Speaker 3: a tunnel. Best regards, Jeremy and Rob. I've attached the
Speaker 3: pictures Jeremy sent for you to look at here. This
Speaker 3: does look at some kind of cave or tunnel and
Speaker 3: the floor is iced over. It has, you know, pools
Speaker 3: of standing ice in the bottom, and there are all
Speaker 3: of these spikes coming up out of the pools and
Speaker 3: they're frozen. And I was wondering, are those ice spikes
Speaker 3: formed by the process we described in the Strange Ice episode,
Speaker 3: where if you'll call in that process, you have like
Speaker 3: a pool of water that is freezing gradually, and as
Speaker 3: it freezes from the outside in because water expands as
Speaker 3: it freezes, it squeezes the water out from a remaining
Speaker 3: hole in the surface of the ice and just keeps
Speaker 3: squeezing out and expanding as the whole thing freezes over,
Speaker 3: eventually forming these weird spikes that come out of the top.
Speaker 3: So it could be that, or I'm wondering, is this
Speaker 3: actually a stalagmite formed by accumulation through dripping, just like
Speaker 3: a stalagmite in a limestone cave. I guess one clue
Speaker 3: would be if the stalagmites below were directly aligned with
Speaker 3: matching icicles above. But I can't tell from the pictures
Speaker 3: if this is the case. So Jeremy, if you have
Speaker 3: more pictures or insight on this, let us know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very cool photos, a little bit creepy.
Speaker 3: More than a little bit. Yeah, there's some frosty, ghostly
Speaker 3: magic happening in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might be a wampa back there. You never
Speaker 2: know what's going to happen, all right, For this next one,
Speaker 2: we have yet more regional feedback. This one comes to
Speaker 2: us from Carlos in response to our Illusion of Control episodes.
Speaker 2: Carlos says, currently taking a break from grading some papers,
Speaker 2: and I thought i'd reach out about your mention of
Speaker 2: Las Vegas in your most recent episode of The Illusion
Speaker 2: of Control Part one, which I started on during breakfast.
Speaker 2: First of all, I wanted to say thanks for mentioning
Speaker 2: that there is more to Vegas than gambling. I have
Speaker 2: lived here for almost three years now, since I started
Speaker 2: a PhD program in literature at UNLV. I thought for
Speaker 2: sure that I would hate it, that I would just
Speaker 2: put my head down and get through the years. This
Speaker 2: was based on my preconceived notions about Vegas, despite my
Speaker 2: wife having grown up here. Growing up in Bakersfield, California,
Speaker 2: we used to just come here to party, and that
Speaker 2: was basically all I have associated with the city. It
Speaker 2: was a pleasant surprise to learn how much more the
Speaker 2: city has to offer, especially since before moving here, my
Speaker 2: wife and I lived in Bishop, California, which has maybe
Speaker 2: three thy five hundred people. I wanted to highlight something
Speaker 2: else Vegas has that's worth visiting. Slash doing. In addition
Speaker 2: to what you both mentioned, Red Rock State Park, just
Speaker 2: outside of the city, is one of the most beautiful
Speaker 2: places on Earth. We moved here in part because we
Speaker 2: knew the climbing was good. But after a few years
Speaker 2: spending time in the canyons, I've fallen increasingly in love
Speaker 2: with the incredibly unique landscape here. It really is something special,
Speaker 2: from the strange rocks to the huge rock walls. I've
Speaker 2: attached some pictures anyways, thanks Carlos and Rob.
Speaker 3: I pulled in some of the photos Carlos attached for
Speaker 3: us to look at. Thank you so much, Carlos wonderful
Speaker 3: message and these photos are great. So we have a
Speaker 3: landscape seeing the canyon and the rocks at a distance.
Speaker 3: But Carlos also sent a lot of close ups of
Speaker 3: just beautiful patterns in the rocks, some of which look
Speaker 3: like the weather on ju Jupiter. Others look like they
Speaker 3: have patches like a cow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, these look great. Yeah. Unfortunately, when my family
Speaker 2: and I went out to Vegas, we were primarily visiting
Speaker 2: family in Arizona, and then we went up to Vegas
Speaker 2: for just a couple of days, and we knew that
Speaker 2: there was good stuff to see out in the surrounding area,
Speaker 2: but we just ended up not having time to do it.
Speaker 2: So if we go back to Vegas at some point,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to make sure that we head out
Speaker 2: and see some of these rocks.
Speaker 3: All right. This next message, also about Illusion of Control,
Speaker 3: is from Jessica. Jessica says, good afternoon. I enjoyed the
Speaker 3: show and wish to thank you for all the time
Speaker 3: and effort you put into it. I enjoyed part one
Speaker 3: of the new series on Control, but was a little
Speaker 3: disappointed that you did not mention Big Jewels dice in
Speaker 3: the dice section. It is from Guys and Dolls. Unfortunately
Speaker 3: I could not find a clip. It goes something like this.
Speaker 3: So the character Big Jewel says, and to change my life,
Speaker 3: I'm going to use my own dice. Another character named
Speaker 3: Nathan Detroit says, not to be petty, but may I
Speaker 3: see those dice. These dice ain't got no spots on them,
Speaker 3: and Jewel says, oh, I had them removed for luck.
Speaker 3: But it's all right. I remember where the spots formerly were.
Speaker 3: And then Detroit asks, you're going to roll blank dice
Speaker 3: and remember where the spots formerly were. I guess. Jewel says, yes, so,
Speaker 3: and then Jessica continues, needless to say, Big Jewel wins
Speaker 3: all his money back. That is the kind of control
Speaker 3: we all wish we had at the casino. It's a
Speaker 3: running joke in our house when we place, when we
Speaker 3: place dice, when we play I guess dice based games.
Speaker 3: Someone get me Big Jewels dice. Thank you for the podcast.
Speaker 3: I hope this entertained you for a moment, at least
Speaker 3: as you have entertained me for many hours. Have a
Speaker 3: good day, Jessica. Thank you, Jessica. And yeah, I'm not
Speaker 3: familiar with guys and dolls, but that's a great gag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I know some of the songs, but
Speaker 2: never never seen the musical in full or the movie adaptation.
Speaker 2: Uh though of course it's, you know, considered a classic.
Speaker 2: I did do a quick search because I'm like, I
Speaker 2: bet you can do this, And sure enough, you can
Speaker 2: just go to your any of your favorite online retailers
Speaker 2: and buy blank d twenties to do with what you
Speaker 2: will if you want to tempt the wrath of your
Speaker 2: dungeon master.
Speaker 4: Oh the mischief we shall make, all right.
Speaker 2: This next one comes to us from Mike. Mike says
Speaker 2: was listening to this episode while waiting for a bus,
Speaker 2: and this was on the light pole I was leaning against. Lol, Mike,
Speaker 2: let's see, let's take a look at this booture. I
Speaker 2: haven't looked at it yet.
Speaker 3: It's a very elaborate sign posted on a crosswalk button.
Speaker 3: It's got a lot of instructions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so it shows us what to do and
Speaker 2: what not to do when the walking man is on
Speaker 2: the light, when the hand is flashing, when the hand
Speaker 2: is solid, Harry, when you're getting the countdown. It's a
Speaker 2: fair amount of instructions. But I mean it must be
Speaker 2: necessary if they've had to post it.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna say, if they're going to make you
Speaker 3: read that much text and follow all the instructions, I
Speaker 3: hope that button actually does change something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also one of those nice elbow friendly buttons.
Speaker 2: It looks like I'm a big fan of this, or
Speaker 2: knee friendly, depending on the exact height. All right, here's
Speaker 2: another one. This one comes to us from John. John says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: thanks for your podcast. Here's a brief anecdote, followed by
Speaker 2: my thoughts on control anecdote. I bought a lottery ticket once.
Speaker 2: The jackpot was huge, so I thought I would. I
Speaker 2: went to a gas station and there was a separate
Speaker 2: line for lottery tickets because they were so popular. I
Speaker 2: get to the front and I'm ask if I want
Speaker 2: to choose my numbers. Understanding my level of control, I
Speaker 2: say no, and before I know it, I have a
Speaker 2: ticket and the next person is being served. My ticket
Speaker 2: wasn't printed, but handed to me from a stack, presumably
Speaker 2: a bunch of and of numbers were pre printed to
Speaker 2: move things along. But knowing nothing about the lottery, I
Speaker 2: couldn't help but wonder if I got a ticket from
Speaker 2: yesterday or something like that. I think chance skepticism at
Speaker 2: times limits both the chance and ease of being cheated,
Speaker 2: or at least a perception. Of course, you could also
Speaker 2: see the entire lottery as a cheat. And he spared
Speaker 2: me from ever buying another ticket. Hah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I guess they probably just pre printed him to speed
Speaker 3: up the line, and they weren't trying to scam you.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it may be beneficial to you just to
Speaker 3: have that suspicion, as I think you're suggesting here, because
Speaker 3: it discourages you from wasting too much money on a
Speaker 3: losing game in the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he continues my thoughts on control. I see my
Speaker 2: mind broken down into consciousness and non consciousness, but not
Speaker 2: in the way that's traditionally defined. I see my consciousness
Speaker 2: as being pure observation and nothing more. My non consciousness
Speaker 2: is everything else. I'll spare most of the details here.
Speaker 2: A decent analogy might be that my mind is like ocean.
Speaker 2: My consciousness is the sunlight. What percentage of the ocean
Speaker 2: is sunlight? Zero? And yet the past present in future
Speaker 2: sunlight plays a huge role in what the ocean was,
Speaker 2: is and will be. How does control fit in? Control,
Speaker 2: it seems to me, is a feeling. It's often helpful,
Speaker 2: it might be necessary for normal function, and it might
Speaker 2: be impossible to eliminate. It feels like I have control,
Speaker 2: for example, over what I include in this email. I
Speaker 2: think that I do counterintuitively and walking a linguistic tight rope,
Speaker 2: I believe I am consciously observing my non conscious control
Speaker 2: splitting hairs. I would argue that consciously controlling what's included
Speaker 2: in this email is a less accurate way of saying
Speaker 2: I consciously observe my control of what's included in this email.
Speaker 2: It's a potentially meaningless distinction, but one that I find intriguing.
Speaker 2: This isn't directly applicable to the illusion of control as
Speaker 2: you've described it, but I thought you might find it interesting.
Speaker 2: I would guess the subjective feeling of control is correlated
Speaker 2: with objective control, but I'll leave that to you guys
Speaker 2: to figure out. Looking forward to part two, if you're
Speaker 2: not lost, I'm happy, honestly if you just read this far,
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled. Thanks John, Thank you, John.
Speaker 3: No, I think this is somewhat applicable, especially to stuff
Speaker 3: we talked about in part three with like the magical
Speaker 3: thinking stuff that you brought up, Rob, So I guess
Speaker 3: this has come up at a couple of points now.
Speaker 3: But the idea of control can be taken in multiple ways.
Speaker 3: One is a simple level of control, and it's the
Speaker 3: meaning used in most of this research. It just means that, like,
Speaker 3: what you do has some predictable influence on the outcome, Whereas,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, there's this other way of looking
Speaker 3: at control, the level you're talking about here, John, where
Speaker 3: the closer you examine your own consciousness and behavior, the
Speaker 3: more difficult it is to see how you meaning your
Speaker 3: consciousness actually controls anything, even your own thoughts and behavior,
Speaker 3: and Rob you brought this up in part three of
Speaker 3: the series when you're talking about magical thinking, because even
Speaker 3: normal physic causation starts to feel more mysterious and potentially
Speaker 3: magical when you start looking for like, where's the clear
Speaker 3: evidence that my conscious will is in the driver's seat,
Speaker 3: and that evidence kind of seems to evaporate the closer
Speaker 3: you look for it. However, I think, as you said, John,
Speaker 3: in the more everyday sense, it is still useful to
Speaker 3: make a distinction between outcomes we can control or influence
Speaker 3: and those we can't, in that sense of just like
Speaker 3: having what you do has some predictable influence on the outcome,
Speaker 3: because if you don't make that distinction, you fail to
Speaker 3: realize that difference, it can, as we talked about, lead
Speaker 3: to all sorts of maladaptive behaviors.
Speaker 2: All right, Shoe, we look at a little bit of
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. Male here, Joe.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, all right, Well, actually I'm going to do
Speaker 3: this one from Chelsea May, which touches on both an
Speaker 3: older Core episode and on Weird House Cinema. Chelsea May says, Hello, Robin,
Speaker 3: Joe of your Guys show, I own a cleaning business,
Speaker 3: and your podcast has gotten has got me through many jobs.
Speaker 3: Keep it up. I did have a comment on I
Speaker 3: believe the Sunken Lands episode. I apologize if I'm stating
Speaker 3: the wrong episode. I had a thought about emailing you
Speaker 3: after it came out, but I'm just getting to it,
Speaker 3: Chelsea May, having read your email, I think this is
Speaker 3: actually referring to the episodes we did on these ancient
Speaker 3: tales of lands where people did not have heads or
Speaker 3: were said to have like their faces were on their
Speaker 3: chest or their abdomen or something, and the context was
Speaker 3: there is a strong possibility that these stories of headless
Speaker 3: people are just purely fanciful invention, creative storytelling, or maybe
Speaker 3: some kind of information got mangled in a telephone game
Speaker 3: in the ancient world. But on the other hand, if
Speaker 3: these stories were based on somebody in the ancient world
Speaker 3: looking at people and somehow mistakenly believing they didn't have heads,
Speaker 3: what could be the cause of that confusion. So anyway,
Speaker 3: Chelsea May's email goes on mention something about people on
Speaker 3: ships seeing people on an island shore that didn't look
Speaker 3: like they had a head. I could see how from
Speaker 3: a certain perspective a person could look like that. It
Speaker 3: made me think of my grandmother. She was one of
Speaker 3: the sweetest and most caring people I've ever met, but
Speaker 3: for many years she worked for Lee Outlet making jeans
Speaker 3: and worked on a farm, so she was bent over
Speaker 3: sewing for most of her life as well as manual labor.
Speaker 3: Because of this, she developed a humped back. When she
Speaker 3: was looking down at something, her back could seem like
Speaker 3: it came up above her head slightly. The people seeing
Speaker 3: on an island could also have had this same back
Speaker 3: ailment because of the work they might have been doing
Speaker 3: to survive. I hope this makes sense, but this is
Speaker 3: why my mind went to my grandmother and I could
Speaker 3: understand why people might have thought the island people didn't
Speaker 3: have heads. Thanks again for all the information I've learned
Speaker 3: from you guys, and all the strange movies you have
Speaker 3: exposed me to. My husband and I watched Santa Claus
Speaker 3: versus the Martians over Christmas because of your show. You
Speaker 3: may well, I'm certainly glad to hear that the conquest
Speaker 3: of Mars by the forces of the North Pole has
Speaker 3: more witnesses. Now, yeah, yeah, that's an interesting idea about
Speaker 3: these things. I mean I think this is one of
Speaker 3: these cases, like we talked about in that episode, where
Speaker 3: we're probably never going to know what actually happened leading
Speaker 3: to these stories. Obviously it was not the case that
Speaker 3: people didn't actually have heads, but it is interesting to
Speaker 3: consider the possibilities, and that does seem like another one
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I didn't see it mentioned in any of
Speaker 2: the materials we were looking at. Maybe it's explored elsewhere,
Speaker 2: But now that I'm thinking about it, you could imagine
Speaker 2: a scenario where you had a certain group of people
Speaker 2: from a given culture that are maybe doing the gathering
Speaker 2: on the shore, and maybe those people, you know, are
Speaker 2: specialized in this particular task, or they're depending on elderly
Speaker 2: members of the society that can't engage and some of
Speaker 2: the more robust physical activities anymore. So Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a lot to think about, all right. This next one
Speaker 2: comes to us from Chewy Chewy Rites high Fellows, longtime
Speaker 2: listener and a huge fan of the Weird House episodes.
Speaker 2: In particular, it's become a tradition for my wife and
Speaker 2: I to put these movies on in the background and
Speaker 2: enjoy the dialogue while we doodle, paint and art every
Speaker 2: now and then the art gets shoved aside and the
Speaker 2: weird movie wins memorable mention robot jocks Oh of course, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a lot of fun. AnyWho, the RoboCop episode
Speaker 2: had you guys talking about the goofy stance that RoboCop
Speaker 2: takes when firing is gun. It reminded me of this
Speaker 2: World War Two pistol training video with a similar goofy stance.
Speaker 2: The offhand is not out like someone learning to skateboard,
Speaker 2: but more like someone opening the oven to check on
Speaker 2: the cake inside. Surely this helps with stability, but it
Speaker 2: seems like you would become an easier target to hit
Speaker 2: Smashing show chewing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know about whether they'd be an easier
Speaker 3: target to hit, but I did take a look at
Speaker 3: this video, and yeah, there are some funny looking stances,
Speaker 3: especially at one point where the instructor in the video
Speaker 3: is showing how to sort of do a sort of
Speaker 3: squatting walk and pivot to hit targets when coming out
Speaker 3: of the walk to like freeze and try to aim.
Speaker 3: And it does look pretty funny, and I guess it's
Speaker 3: just one example of how there are a lot of
Speaker 3: activities in the world where what we think is the
Speaker 3: optimal form just does not make you look super cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to be clear, once you have a RoboCop
Speaker 2: situation going on, the conditions for optimal form change. Because
Speaker 2: he does not have a human body, he does not
Speaker 2: have human weaknesses anymore. So whatever form he's taking to
Speaker 2: fire is gun. Who are we to argue with his programmers?
Speaker 2: By the way, if you're curious about this video, it's
Speaker 2: on YouTube with the title combat Firing with Handgun Military
Speaker 2: Training Video Part one. It's like an old World War
Speaker 2: two short that's now public domain.
Speaker 3: I've watched other videos like this before. I think there's
Speaker 3: a famous one that's like combat knife fighting training video
Speaker 3: for World War Two, and it's the tone of them
Speaker 3: is so strange because it has that kind of cheerful
Speaker 3: sounding nineteen forties movie narrator film strip narrator voice, and it's,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of like, oh, assume the fighting stance
Speaker 3: so that the knife blade is pointed toward you. I
Speaker 3: don't know, it just sounds like a like a National
Speaker 3: Parks video or something, but it's about how to kill people.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: I think we have one more, don't we, Joe.
Speaker 3: That's right, This last message comes from column Column says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 3: hope all is good. I just came across this cool
Speaker 3: video attached on my Instagram feed about a guy who
Speaker 3: gives a helping hand to hermit crabs off real shells
Speaker 3: to poor hermit crabs who can only find plastic rubbish
Speaker 3: shells on the beach. At the time the video was made,
Speaker 3: he had helped over one hundred and fifty crabs move
Speaker 3: into new proper shell homes.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Okay, he's kind of breaking the prime directive there,
Speaker 2: but I guess prime directive has already been broken regarding
Speaker 2: hermit crab civilization.
Speaker 3: At least on his face, it seems like that would
Speaker 3: be a helpful thing to do. I guess my natural
Speaker 3: instinct is to be a little cautious about interventions of
Speaker 3: that sort, because I would always wonder if there's like
Speaker 3: some secondary effect or something that could bring about that's
Speaker 3: actually overall not helpful to the ecosystem. But I don't
Speaker 3: want to be too suspicious. I mean, it seems like
Speaker 3: a nice thing to do. I don't know, people who
Speaker 3: have more knowledge about this environment or hermit krab ecology,
Speaker 3: let us know. Is this a nice and helpful thing
Speaker 3: to do. It seems like it maybe possibly yes, certainly
Speaker 3: appears to come from a place of love. But the
Speaker 3: second thing Colin says is regarding Zoo Warriors from the
Speaker 3: Magic Mountain.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I could only find a stream online in Chinese with
Speaker 3: no subtitles, so I watched it with the sound off,
Speaker 3: and even then I had to take regular breaks in
Speaker 3: order to prevent my head from exploding.
Speaker 4: What a movie.
Speaker 3: All the best your pal, Column. Thank you so much, Column.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you enjoyed Zoo Warriors. It sounds like as
Speaker 3: much as we did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is overpowering. Yeah, I would say if
Speaker 2: you set out to watch this movie, factor in some breaks.
Speaker 2: It's a lot to take in in one setting.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think that does it for today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We'll go ahead and close the mail bag for now,
Speaker 2: but keep it coming, keep writing in if you have
Speaker 2: thoughts on past, present, and future episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind, Weird House Cinema, or anything else we
Speaker 2: put out on the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed,
Speaker 2: and will remind you that our core episodes published on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday, short form episode
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set us oude most
Speaker 2: serious concerns just about a weird movie on Weird Out Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.